Ireland v UK 2018

Judgement of ECHR | 20 March 2018

ECHR have rejected application by Irish Government to revise the original judgement in the Hooded Men case ROI v UK 1978. The 1978 judgement found that the treatment constituted inhuman & degrading treatment, but not torture. Today the ECHR has upheld that judgement 6-1 (Judge O'Leary dissenting- se...

MI5 sought immunity for agents' criminal acts, tribunal told

Investigatory Powers Tribunal | 04 October 2018

MI5 agents have been granted legal immunity to participate in murder, torture, sexual assaults and other criminality, a tribunal has heard. The secret policy may, for decades, have enabled the security service to conceal illegal activity, Ben Jaffey QC told the investigatory powers tribunal. Even ov...

Evidence of Waterboarding in Belfast

PFC seeking information on waterboarding victims

PFC | 01 February 2017

The Pat Finucane Centre is seeking the help to identity two victims of waterboarding in Belfast in 1972. At least four cases have recently come to light and the centre has already spoken to two of the victims. According to declassified documents discovered by the PFC concerns were raised by Taoiseac...

"Malice Intended" The Hooded Men

Morning Star | 01 April 2017

Anne Cadwallader tells the story of the Hooded Men, internees subjected to fine-tuned methods of torture, that left little physical evidence, in various imperial theatres of war – from Malaya to Kenya – imported by Britain to Ireland in 1971

Kenyan Mau Mau: official policy was to cover up brutal mistreatment

Event to Mark International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

| 23 June 2017

26th June marks the International Day in Support of the Victims of Torture. The PFC, along with our colleagues in CAJ, Amnesty International and Matrix Chambers marked the day by outlining evidence of torture carried out by the RUC and British Army during the 1970's in the north of Ireland at an eve...

The Pat Finucane Centre at Féile an Phobail 2017

British Lies to European Court Paved Way for Global Use of Torture

Tom Griffin/Open Democracy | 25 July 2017

When the European Court ruled that detainees in Northern Ireland were NOT tortured but only subjected to "inhuman and degrading" treatment, it gave the green light to other regimes worldwide. New evidence shows the court's ruling was based on false evidence - yet people are still being tortured toda...

Event "Beating the natives"

Mon 14 Aug, Museum of Free Derry | 11 August 2017

“Throughout Britain's colonial history, in Kenya, Yemen, Malaya and elsewhere, London broke all accepted moral and legal standards by torturing its opponents. Ireland was no different with British 'water-boarding' detainee thirty years before the USA did the same in Guantanamo. Using statements made...

Facts about Atrocity: Reporting Colonial Violence in Postwar Britain

2 February 2018 | 22 August 2017

ABSTRACT What did people in Britain know about the violence of counterinsurgency campaigns at the end of empire in the 1940s and 1950s? In many ways, British knowledge about colonial violence was widespread. But it was also fragmented and ambiguous: whispered among family and friends; dramatized in...

MI5 and the 'Hooded Men'

Tom Griffin | 11 September 2017

MI5 and the Hooded Men: The role of David Eastwood in Operation Calaba In recent months, the Pat Finucane Centre has uncovered an array of new evidence pointing to the use of waterboarding and electric shock treatment by army and RUC interrogators in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.